WND Article Features Folks Offended That Gays Exist Topic: WorldNetDaily
We've previously noted that one thread of WorldNetDaily's anti-gay agenda is objection to anything in a given school curriculum that dares to suggest the mere existence of homosexuals. That tradition continues in a June 2 article by Sterling Meyers in which he claims "Christian leaders are speaking out against a Clovis, N.M., high school yearbook that included photos of and interviews with same-sex couples."
The exact offense, according to Meyers: "The Clovis yearbook features photos and interviews with two lesbian couples on a two-page presentation along with nine heterosexual couples." That's right: Even though the lesbian couples were outnumbered by the straight ones 9-to-2, that wasn't enough for these "Christian leaders" -- in fact, Meyers names only two, "a community member and leader of a Clovis church group" and an "associate pastor at Central Baptist Church in Clovis" -- they apparently no public acknowledgement that gays exist in Clovis.
Meyers goes on to uncritically write that one of these "leaders" "wrote in a letter to the editor that religious beliefs aside, a majority of Americans still feel that homosexuality is offensive, just as a majority might find pornography and child predators, and other 'social anomalies' offensive." No evidence is given as to support the claim that homosexuality is no different than pornography and pedophilia, nor does Meyers allow anyone to respond to this or any other claim made by the "Christian leaders."
BTW, who is Sterling Meyers? He's apparently a summer intern, a graduate of the World Journalism Institute -- which was founded under the aegis of of conservative Marvin Olasky's World magazine, features a heavily right-skewing slate of teachers and speakers, and claims a mission "to recruit, equip, place and encourage Christians in the mainstream newsrooms of America" -- who most recently interned at the Washington Times. Apparently, making sure conservative Christians get the last word is part of the curriculum there.
Last December, WorldNetDaily tried to have it both ways by running a three-part series that was (mostly) complementary of "Purpose-Driven Life" guy Rick Warren while editor Joseph Farah attacked Warren for various reasons (largely centering around not hewing to Farah's version of Christianity).
Now, Farah has decided to ignite another skirmish with Warren. In a May 30 column, Farah declared he has "another issue with Rick Warren's ministry": Warren's PEACE Coalition, an acronym that refers to the group's purposes: "Equip servant leaders, Assist the poor, Care for the sick and Educate the next generation." Farah writes:
"At a wedding the bride is the main character, the center, the start of the show – everyone else is supporting cast, but the glory goes to the bride," Warren was quoted as saying in the press release. "The PEACE Plan is built on the same principle. The Bride of Christ – of which the church is its local expression around the world – deserves the focus, the credit and the glory for faithfully serving their communities year after year."
I wrote to Rick Warren about my concerns. He has yet to respond. So here is my beef.
While it may be true that at other weddings, the bride is the star and gets the glory, it will not be true in the wedding feast of Jesus. HE is the star. HE gets the glory.
[...]
Believers need to be very careful about the language we use about God for fear of misleading people – believers and non-believers alike. It is even more important for pastoral leaders to stick to the Bible as the standard because of their position and the audiences they reach.
Warren responded with a June 2 WND column containing a Bible lesson on giving glory to God prefaced by stating, "I believe Jesus Christ deserves all the glory. It is the purpose of life. The stated theme of the PEACE plan is, 'For the global glory of God.'"
The top of Warren's column adds in an editor's note: "Farah's reply will appear tomorrow." So the theological debate will continue -- even though Farah's a newsman, not a theologian.
One question, though: Will Warren ask about, and will Farah defend, the sale in WND's store of a book bashing Warren's "spiritual agenda" and the purported "New Age implications of the Purpose-Driven church"? (The term "New Age" appears seven times in the promo copy for the book.)
Bozell Belatedly Sorta Addresses Hagee's Statements Topic: Media Research Center
The June 2 edition of "Fox & Friends," the following exchange occurred between the MRC's Brent Bozell and radio host Mike Papantonio:
PAPANTONIO: It's impossible to believe that when McCain went begging to Hagee for his endorsement and for cash, that he didn't know that Hagee had insulted millions of Catholics by saying that the Catholic Church was the great world whore. So there's no difference here. If you're going to treat Obama one way, you're going have to treat Obama exactly the same way.
BOZELL: Mike, there's a huge difference. You're talking to a Catholic here. Hagee did make those statements. Hagee subsequently apologized -- apologized unequivocably for those statements. It's -- the apology is something Jeremiah Wright would never understand, and Catholics accepted that apology.
This is, as far as we know, the very first time that Bozell has directly commented on the Hagee's claims. As we detailed, Bozell could not be bothered to even mention Hagee's comments at the time they were first made public, let alone denounce them, even though he had denounced statements by others he deemed anti-Catholic. Indeed, Bozell makes no effort to denounce Hagee here.
Further, Bozell's claim that Hagee "apologized unequivocably for those statements" ignores the fact that the apology came only after more than twomonths of criticism by the Catholic League and others -- criticism that Bozell and the MRC essentially ignored in order to protect McCain.
NewsBusters posted a truncated version of Bozell's appearance, so it's difficult to discern whether Fox News hewed to the template by not identifying Bozell as a conservative. As we've noted, in at least one previous joint appearance, Fox identified Papantonio as a "Barack Obama supporter" but not Bozell as a (de facto, at least) McCain supporter.
Kessler Completes Flip-Flop from McCain-Basher to McCain Fluffer Topic: Newsmax
We've noted Ronald Kessler's journey from McCain-basher to McCain fluffer. He has made that journey complete by flip-flopping on his previous criticism of John McCain's temper.
In January, Kessler wrote of "McCain’s monumental character flaws," chief among them being "his outbursts of temper." Kessler wrote of the following incident:
Defending his bill to give amnesty to illegal aliens, McCain unleashed a tirade on Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who had voiced concerns about the number of judicial appeals illegal immigrants could file under the proposed legislation.
“F*** you!” McCain said to his fellow senator. “I know more about this than anybody else in the room!” McCain shouted.
Kessler added: "Over and over, voters have ignored warning signs of poor character and have overlooked track records, only to regret it once a president enters the White House and becomes corrupted by the power of the office."
Fast-forward to the May issue of Newsmax magazine and its cover story on McCain by Kessler (not available online). No dire warnings about McCain's temper here -- in fact, Kessler now believes his temper is an asset to the presidency.
Indeed, Kessler repeats the above Cornyn anecdote, then adds things he didn't write in January to give it a completely opposite spin:
McCain's swagger didn't irk Cornyn enough for him to withhold support for his candidacy. When Cornyn endorsed McCain's presidential bid in February, he said "He is clearly the man for the job."
[...]
McCain has explained his outbursrts by saying, "I have always had this acute sense of right and wrong. All my life I have been offended by hyprocisy."
That scrappy approach resembles the way he boxed while at the Naval Academy.
That's right -- what was once a "signs of poor character" is now a "scrappy approach."
The rest of the article is largely sycophantic, suggesting there are "two John McCains" -- the war hero and the "unpredictable maverick" with the "volatile temper -- and unsurprisingly concluding that "the two sides of John McCain may turn out to be a winning combination."
Congratulations, Mr. Kessler! You've completely contradicted yourself over a span of just a few months, demonstrating once and for all that you have no journalistic principles worth mentioning -- just a desire to be on the side of whoever's the winning Republican -- and therefore cannot be trusted as a journalist.
The big question now, of course, is whether Kessler will fawn over Cindy McCain as creepily as he did over Mitt Romney's wife.
Aaron Klein Anti-Obama Agenda Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
Aaron Klein's 34th anti-Obama article for WorldNetDaily (versus just one attacking John McCain) is yet anpother take on controversial comments made by a guest pastor at Obama's former church.
By contrast, Klein has never reported on controversial comments made by McCain spiritual advisers John Hagee and Rod Parsley -- even moreevidence that Klein is acting as an anti-Obama, pro-McCain partisan rather than an objective reporter.
WND Gives Away Anti-Islam Book Rights, Still Won't Discuss Shoebat Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily reported on May 26 that it was offering publishers in the Middle East an opportunity to publish its anti-Islam book, "Why We Left Islam," without charging for publication rights. The stated reason is "to propel this fast-growing religion into the sort of self-examination that it desperately needs," with a purported goal "of sparking an honest discussion about Islam, freedom of speech and human rights in the very lands where Muslims predominate."
That's mostly window-dressing, of course. As we've noted, WND has centered its promotion of the book around the fact that it's "the first U.S. book ever to feature an image of Muhammad on the cover," with an apparent hope, if not an actual goal, to spark riots like the ones that greeted publication of cartoons of Muhammad in Europe and elsewhere a couple years back.
The article continues WND's silence on Walid Shoebat, one of the key anti-Islam activists featured in the book. As we've detailed, numerous questions have been raised about the veracity of Shoebat's claims to have once been a Palestinian terrorist. Shoebat has not appeared in any WND publicity for the book -- which suggests there's an awareness on WND's part that Shoebat is a problem -- but neither WND nor book compiler/editors Susan Crimp and Joel Richardson have publicly addressed the issue of Shoebat's veracity. Indeed, Richardson is currently co-authoring a book with Shoebat, making him especially disinclined to bring up the controversy.
UPDATE: Richard Bartholomew has posted a video from Shoebat's website promoting a book by his teenage son, Theodore, that "expresses Theodore’s virulent hatred of Islam and science, and his belief that militarized Christian fundamentalism is the answer to both." Somehow we suspect that this is another thing Richardson won't be discussing anytime soon.
A May 30 NewsBusters post by Brad Wilmouth uncritically repeats Karl Rove's claim that Richard Armitage "was the actual leaker" of Valerie Plame's identity to reporters.
As we've detailed when NewsBusters has previously made this claim, Rove did discuss Plame's identity with reporters prior to Robert Novak reporting it in July 2003. Armitage was Novak's main source, but Rove confirmed it to Novak.
Kincaid Works Commies Into Anti-McClellan Conspiracy Topic: Accuracy in Media
Like that kid in "The Sixth Sense" who sees dead people, Accuracy in Media sees communists. So it's no surprise that Kincaid works up a commie angle as his contribution to the conservative war against Scott McClellan.
In his May 29 AIM column, Kincaid claims that because the publisher of McClellan's book, Peter Osnos, once worked for liberal journalist I.F. Stone, McClellan is obviously "reading from a script prepared by Osnos & Company and the far left." Kincaid adds:
Osnos is the key to understanding the network that is working behind-the-scenes. A former national news editor of the Post, Osnos was an assistant to I.F. Stone in the 1960s. Stone postured as an independent radical writer but was exposed as a Soviet agent in the transcripts of Soviet messages known as the Venona intercepts and by other sources.
Former Soviet KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin had identified Stone as a Soviet agent, but under pressure from Stone’s friends in the media later backed away from that precise description. However, in his book, The First Directorate: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West, Kalugin still identified Stone as a “fellow traveler” of the Soviet Union who “made no secret of his admiration for the Soviet system” over a period of many years and had regular contacts and lunches with him.
But Kincaid fails to acknowledge that the alleged evidence linking Stone to work as a Soviet agent is dubious at best.
Kincaid's claim that the Venona transcripts "exposed" Stone as a Soviet agent apparently comes from his buddy Herbert Romerstein, which whom Kincaid penned an article purporting to link Barack Obama to various commies (which WorldNetDaily's Jerome Corsi ate up without bothering with journalistic niceities like fact-checking). As the New York Times points out:
Charges against Stone, who died in 1989, first surfaced seven years ago, when Oleg Kalugin, a retired K.G.B. general, implicated Stone as having been a Soviet agent. The allegation was received skeptically, and Kalugin subsequently denied it, saying that Stone was merely a friendly "contact" of the K.G.B.'s. But Romerstein -- drawing on the Venona documents -- argues that Stone had a relationship during the Second World War with a K.G.B. agent named Vladimir Pravdin who served as a TASS correspondent in Washington. In 1944, according to Romerstein, Pravdin cabled his superiors in Moscow that Stone, whose code name was "Blin" -- the Russian word for pancake -- would continue to talk to him only if he were paid. Stone and Pravdin continued to meet, which proves to Romerstein's satisfaction that Stone must have been paid.
Stone, who had no access to classified information, can't have been an important agent, if he was indeed a Soviet agent of any kind. But he is a crucial figure to Romerstein precisely because he remains an icon to those Romerstein sees as the legatees of the Popular Front. To show that a hero of left-wing journalists, prized for his incorruptibility and "independence," was in fact a paid Soviet informant is to strike close to the heart of the enemy.
Romerstein is decidedly politially motivated to smear Stone, as well as obviously an obsessive anti-Communist, which arguably taints his claims.
Meanwile, Eric Alterman adds: "Despite continuous FBI surveillance of Stone's daily activities and a dogged desire by J. Edgar Hoover to nail him for something, not a single shred of evidence ever emerged to support any spy allegations against him." Alterman further states:
If ex-post facto anonymous FBI conclusions are correct, Stone, a working journalist, had lunch with the Tass correspondent in 1945, back when the United States was still nominally allied with the Soviet Union, having no way of knowing the man's secret identity as a KGB agent. Later, during the 1960s, he had occasional lunches with the Soviet press attaché, who, also unbeknownst to him, turned out to work for the KGB. Remember, it's a journalist's job to seek information and trade opinions with representatives of foreign governments. Remember, Izzy had no access to classified information whatever. Remember, the FBI hounded him for decades seeking to find something to pin on him and found nothing. They could not even connect him in any way to the Communist Party of either the United States or the Soviet Union, though they tried mightily.
[...]
What's more, in order to make it appear as if [Myra] MacPherson [author of a biography of Stone] has “hanged” Stone, [reviewer Paul] Berman ignores the following, which appears in exactly the same paragraph in the book that he finds so damning: "Did he [Kalugin] have actual information that Stone had ever cooperated with Soviet intelligence? 'No.'" Kalugin said Stone “was just useful like dozens of other [journalistic] contacts.” When Paul writes that Stone would "perform tasks" -- that is, "find out what the views of someone in the government were or some senator on such and such an issue" -- he does not note that Kalugin cannot remember a single thing of importance that Stone might have said. Stone, said Kalugin, was merely "on the fringe" and "just useful, like dozens of other [media] contacts I had." In contrast, he averred to MacPherson, "I knew one guy from Time magazine, for instance. That was a big thing." Kalugin also offers up his opinion that Stone "was a true liberal and not a Communist ... He would not hurt or damage the United States."
For Kincaid to continue to insist that Stone was unambiguously a Soviet agent is to repeat a false claim. Perhaps Kincaid needs to adjust his meds so he's not seeing commies where they don't really exist.
WND Joins the Anti-McClellan Conspiracy Topic: WorldNetDaily
A May 29 WorldNetDaily article rehashes claims that "Billionaire George Soros, funder of elite causes and critic of most things conservative, has been linked by a blogger to former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's hate-Bush book" through his alleged involvement with the parent company of the book's publisher. But WND, like the MRC's Brent Baker before it, fails to offer any actual evidence that Soros had any direct involvement with McClellan's book, nor does it mention that the publisher, Perseus Books Group, also runs the Basic Books imprint that has published numerous books by conservative authors.
Speaking of Baker, a May 30 NewsBusters post by him rehashes some of his previous claims about the book's publisher while again failing to mention the conservative books Perseus publishes. Baker also calls McClellan's book an "anti-Bush screed" while not exhibiting any evidence that he has actually read it, let alone proving any claims in it are false.
Weyrich Repeats Misleading Attack on Bible Textbook Topic: Free Congress Foundation
A July 29 column by Paul Weyrich, reprinted at Newsmax, repeats a misleading attack on the Bible Literacy Project and its textbook "The Bible And Its Influence." As we noted, WorldNetDaily's Bob Unruh wrote an attack on the book in April, based almost entirely on accusations made by Alabama state senator Scott Beason. WND also published a column by Beason, which Weyrich cites (and apparently based his column on).
Weyrich fails to mention that WND also published a response to Beason by Bible Literacy Project general editor Cullen Schippe, who counters many of Beason's claims, pointing out that they are "are deeply misinformed and contain falsehoods and misleading, out-of-context statements." For instance, both Beason and Weyrich overly focus on one consultant for the book, Charles Haynes. But as Schippe pointed out, Haynes was just one of 40 reviewers of the book.
Further, like Unruh and WND, Weyrich failed to mention Beason's status as an adviser for a competing Bible cuirriculum, as Schippe also pointed out.
Weyrich said he "endorsed the [Bible Literacy] Project," then added: "Now that I have been made aware of what this Project is really about, thanks to Sen. Beason, I hereby withdraw my endorsement. Once again liberals stole what began as a worthwhile initiative. This is worse than public schools without God." Weyrich might want to try getting the actual facts before bailing out.
UPDATE: CNSNews.com also published Weyrich's column.
Aaron Klein Anti-Obama Agenda Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
Aaron Klein's anti-Obama article count is now up to 33 (versus just one attacking John McCain) with twoarticles on controversial comments made by what Klein claims is a "spiritual adviser" to Obama.
By contrast, Klein has never reported on controversial comments made by McCain spiritual adviser John Hagee -- even moreevidence that Klein is acting as an anti-Obama, pro-McCain partisan rather than an objective reporter.
Here's the lead of a May 29 CNSNews.com article by Susan Jones:
With a straight face Thursday morning, Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said he wrote his critical and unflattering book about the Bush administration, believing that it "might help move us beyond the destructive partisan warfare" in Washington.
Does Jones have any evidence to suggest a reason McClellan wouldn't speak with a straight face? She doesn't offer any in her article, which suggests she doesn't have any -- which further suggests she's dishing out a partisan attack against McClellan, and the suggestion is lying is one she shouldn't be making at all.
The MRC's attacks on Scott McClellan's new book have been in line with conservative talking points -- he's bitter, the liberal media is biased, pretending that the uniform talking points weren't coordinated, etc.
But it took a big leap toward the conspiratorial with a May 29 NewsBusters post by Brent Baker, in which he asserts that McClellan's publisher, Public Affairs Books, "has a roster of authors who are nearly all liberals and/or liberal-leaning mainstream media figures, including six books by far-left bank-roller George Soros," and the imprint's publisher, Peter Osnos, "pens a weekly column for the left of center The Century Foundation," where he once "denounced Rush Limbaugh as “bombastic, aggressive, and mean." Further, Baker adds:
PublicAffairs is part of the Perseus Books Group, which also owns Nation Books, “a project of The Nation Institute” which publishes the magazine of the same name, and Vanguard Press, whose home page now features The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, a new book by Vincent Bugliosi that “presents a tight, meticulously researched legal case that puts George W. Bush on trial in an American courtroom for the murder of nearly 4,000 American soldiers fighting the war in Iraq.”
What Baker doesn't tell you: Perseus Books Group also owns Basic Books, a conservative imprint that has publishedseveralbooksby William F. Buckley Jr., as well as titles by Dinesh D'Souza, Linda Chavez, and DavidFrum, as well as "a conservative manifesto" that aims to "save the environment from the environmentalists" and a book that paints Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential run as "one of the major political turning points of the twentieth century: The policy positions and electoral strategies of that campaign have become standard tenets of Republican politics."
(Sadly, No! serves up a summation of Baker's post here.)
So the idea that Perseus is exclusively a left-wing publisher is bogus, as if that has any bearing on the accuracy of information presented in McClellan's book. Still that didn't keep Mark Finkelstein from asserting in a May 29 post that "there's every reason to wonder whether Soros isn't behind McClellan's manifesto."
Meanwhile, on a somewhat less conspiratorial note, Alex Koppelman at Salon shoots down a May 28 NewsBusters post by Rich Noyes complaining that the memoir by Ari Fleischer, another former Bush press secretary, did not get comparable media attention to McClellan's because "Fleischer did not take pot shots at his former employer, but did include some telling examples of the liberal bias of press." Koppelman writes:
Noyes says that "TV coverage the week after Fleischer’s book was released was limited to just eight interviews, none given that much prominence." It's an odd take, because according to Noyes Fleischer appeared on all three major cable news networks -- specifically, he appeared three times on Fox News, the highest-rated news network, and twice on runner-up CNN -- and on two out of the three network morning shows, which are a plum spot. Most authors would commit unspeakable acts for that kind of coverage.
As so often happens when people with little or no experience in the actual news business criticize it, the critics' lack of knowledge has led to a fundamental flaw in their argument. A former White House press secretary coming out and slagging his former boss and former colleagues is news, especially when he offers revelations about the workings of the White House. That's why McClellan's book has gotten so much coverage, and the same thing would have happened in the Clinton administration.
[...]
Fleischer's book, too, was devoid of any new information of real substance. In a biting review of it for the New York Times, critic Michiko Kakutani wrote that the book was "essentially a collection of talking points hastily pasted together with large slatherings of the vitriol and exasperation the author seems to have accumulated ... It's an extended exercise in Mr. Fleischer's spinning his own earlier spin."
In other words, Noyes is complaining that a book making newsworthy revelations is getting more attention than a book that didn't.
New Article -- Clinton Derangement Syndrome: The Evidence Topic: The ConWeb
Hillary Clinton's presidential run has inspired the ConWeb to spew all manner of hatred at her and her husband (again). Read more >>
Aaron Klein Anti-Obama Agenda Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
In his 31st WorldNetDaily article attacking Barack Obama (versus just one attacking John McCain), Aaron Klein claims in a May 28 WND article that "inconsistencies remain regarding the much-touted military service of the presidential candidate's family."
Klein has not applied a similar level of scrutiny to gaffes made by McCain -- yet moreevidence that Klein is acting as an anti-Obama, pro-McCain partisan rather than an objective reporter.
UPDATE: It appears that Klein is sleazing his way down the right-wing blog chain for his Obama smears now. Sadly, No! reports that Dan Riehl (best known for his false smears of S.R. Sidarth) and Sweetness and Light are on this story as well. This does comport with Klein's recent reliance on right-wing blogs to fuel his Obama dirt.
